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Hecate is the Greek goddess
of the crossroads and is believed by some to be descended from the
Titans. She was a Greek goddess with two quite distinct aspects to
her personality - In the day she was supposed to have a benign
influence on farming, but during the hours of night and darkness
she was involved in witchcraft, ghosts and tombs.
Very like the vegetation goddess Demeter, Hecate combined
fertility with death as a power of the earth, making her a feared
and revered figure. Her most famous disciple is Medea, who married
Jason after helping him get the Golden Fleece using magical spells
and incantations. The powerful witch Circe, known as the
seductress and tormentor of Odysseus, was another of Hecate's
followers.
She is most often depicted as having three heads; one of a dog,
one of a snake and one of a horse. She is usually seen with two
ghost hounds that were said to serve her. The Athenians were
particularly respectful towards her, and once a month they placed
offerings of food at crossroads, where her influence was
strongest.
Hecate is most often portrayed as the goddess of witchcraft or
evil, but she did some very good things in her time. One such deed
was when she helped to rescue Persephone (Demeter's daughter, the
queen of the Underworld and the maiden of spring), from the
Underworld. She eventually became Persephone's attendant in the
Underworld, once Persephone married Hades. Hecate is said to haunt
a three-way crossroad, each of her heads facing in a certain
direction and appears when the ebony moon shines.
The following is from The
Book of Demons
by Victoria Hyatt & Joseph W. Charles
The Greeks often called Hecate, Agriope,
which means 'savage face.' She is said to have three faces,
which symbolized her powers over the underworld, earth, and air.
She is known as the lady of the underworld, of chthonic rites,
and of black magic.
Her Hebrew name was Sheol, and the Egyptians knew her as Nepthys.
She was the daughter of the titan Perses and of Asteria,
although sometimes it is said that Zeus himself fathered her.
The Thracians were the first people to worship her in the
moon-goddess aspect, though soon her worship spread to the
Greeks, who linked her with the moon-goddesses Artemis and
Selene. She was also associated with Lucina and Diana. At times
she was benign and motherly and would act as midwife, wet-nurse,
and foster-mother, while keeping an eye on flocks and crops.
Greek kings asked for her help in administering justice, knowing
that with Hecate on their side they would attain victory and
glory in battle.
But the other side of her nature, most apparent when the moon
was dark, gradually superseded her kinder side. Although Homer
did not mention her in his poems, by the time Hesiod was
chronicling the events of his world, her powers were already
very great. She had become an infernal deity, a snake goddess
with three heads: a dog's, a horse's, and a lion's. She was
portrayed with her three bodies, back to back, carrying a spear,
a sacrificial cup, and a torch.
Having witnessed the rape of
Persephone, torch-beasing Hecate was sent by Zeus to help
Demeter find her. When they found Persephone in Hades, Hecate
remained there as her companion. During her stay in the
underworld, Hecate wore a single brazen sandal, and she was the
protector and teacher of sorceresses and enchanters. Her high
priestess was Medea, who was worthy of her mistress, and cruelly
murdered her own two children after her husband left her for
another woman.
Hecate's influence was long lasting, and the medieval witches
worshipped the willow tree which was sacred to her. The same
root word which gave 'willow' and 'wicker,' also gave 'witch'
and 'wicked.'
Thus Hecate became key-holder of
hell and queen of the departed, dispatching phantoms from the
underworld. At night she left Hades and would roam on earth,
bringing terror to the hearts of those who heard her approach.
She was accompanied by her bounds and by the bleak souls of the
dead. She appeared as a gigantic woman bearing a sword and a
torch, her feet and hair bristling with snakes, her voice like
that of a howling dog. Her favourite nocturnal retreat was near
a lake called Amaramtiam Phasis, 'the lake of murders.'
To placate her, the people erected statues at crossroads. There,
under the full moon, feasts called 'Hecate's suppers' were
served. Dogs, eggs, honey, milk, and particularly black ewes
were sacrificed at that time. The most powerful magic
incantations of antiquity were connected with Hecate, and her
rites were described at length by Apollonius Rhodus in his
Argonautica:
'...and he kindled the logs, placing the fire beneath,
and poured over them the mingled libations, calling on Hecate
Brimo to aid him in the contest, And when he had called on her
he drew back: and she heard him, the dreaded goddess, from the
uttermost depths and came to the sacrifice of Aeson's son; and
round her horrible serpents twined themselves among the oak
boughs; and there was the gleam of countless torches; and
sharply howled around her the hounds of hell. All the meadows
trembled at her step, and the nymphs that haunt the marsh and
the river shrieked, all who dance round that meadow of
Amarantiam Phasis.'
In one of her incarnations she was Hucuba, the wife of
Priam, King of Troy, and mother of Cassandra, Hector, Helenus,
and Paris. While pregnant with Paris, she had a dream in which
she gave birth to a flaming torch which consumed Troy.
Understanding the awesome foreboding of this omen, she left the
infant exposed on Mount Ida. But the Fates had ordained
differently, and years later Paris returned to Troy, bringing
with him the war that was to be the end of that great city.
When Polymnestor, a Thracian king, murdered her son Polydorus,
her vengeance was terrible: she slew Polymnestor's two children
and gouged his eyes out. Although acquitted by the Greeks, she
was changed into a dog at which the Thracians threw stones.
Trying to escape her punishment, she jumped into the sea at
Cynossema, which in translation means 'tomb of the dog.'
Hecate, powerful in heaven, earth
and hell, possessed all the great dark knowledge, and is
rightfully called the mother of witches. She was the great
goddess of magic, and she outstripped Circe, her daughter, in
importance. Yet another of her daughters also achieved hellish
fame:
'...and let them not fall in their helplessness into
Charybdis lest she swallow them at one gulp, or approach the
hideous lair of Scylla, Ausonian Scylla, Scylla the deadly, whom
night-wandering Hecate, who is called Crataeis, bare to Phorcys...'
The extent of her powers can be
judged by the great numbers of animals, plants and emblems that
were sacred to her. Weasels were her attendants. So were owls in
their silent flight, with the carrion-smell of their nests and
their eyes shining in the dark. Hound, knife, lotus, rope, and
sword are other emblems of Hecate. Shakespeare knew that hemlock
and the yew tree were sacred to her. In Macbeth, 'slips of yew
sliver'd in the Moon's eclipse' were contained in the witches'
cauldron. The yew, sacred to the goddess of the underworld,
still grows in cemeteries.
The following is
used by kind permission of
WEB PERSONALITY HECATE
Hecate is a very special goddess.
Reigning over the powers of sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment,
black magic, fertility, death, the crossroads, and renewal.
According to some sources, she is one of the Furies, to others,
she was the last surviving Titan except for Zeus, still others,
and she was merely descended from the Titans, Asteria and Perses.
Not only has she been vastly misrepresented over time, but she
continues to live on today as a deity to some groups of people,
namely pagan and wiccan in belief, who look upon her in an
altered modern sense as the Great Mother.
Watcher over the crossroads, Hecate usually is shown holding two
huge torches to light the way and direct, Hecate represents a
coming together of three at a point. The crossroads which she
guards have a past, a present, and a future. Where will you go,
where have you been, where are you now? The crossroads can also
represent her domains of the sky, land, and the underworld. In
addition the crossroads were looked at as a ghostly place at
night.
The Athenians were especially respectful towards Hecate, and
once a month they placed food offerings at the crossroads, where
her influence was said to be felt. Her aspect of threes is also
noted when she is sometimes referred to as a triple goddess.
These three goddesses include, Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate.
Demeter represents the old crone woman, Persephone the wife
woman, and Hecate is the Maiden. It is said that Hecate was the
only one watching when Hades kidnapped Persephone into the great
underworld, and that it was Hecate that supplied her with the
seeds of the pomegranate.
Why is Hecate always portrayed as a
dark, evil, malevolent witch? Today she is the crone, the hag,
the worker of evil curses. This is not known very well, for most
of Hecate's myths were related orally, but before Homer, Hecate
was regarded as benign. She helped with agriculture and gave
life to dying crops. During the day she was supposed to have a
benign influence on farming, but during the hours of darkness
she was interested in witchcraft, ghosts, and tombs. In ample
ways she was similar to the vegetation goddess Demeter/Ceres.
Hecate uncomfortably combined fertility with death as a power of
the earth. Perhaps this is the beginning of her association with
the dead.
Also, in Mytilene on the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea, near
the assumed location of Troy, there were Temples of Demeter,
where the women would go to an annual festival called Eleusis
(without their husbands, who would sometimes dress up as women
from excessive curiosity as to the goings on) to celebrate
fertility rituals for the annual renewal of crops and their
success for the next year.
Altars abounded and much evidence of black magic has been
uncovered there. Thick nails would be driven into the ground or
the altar, piercing through a piece of parchment rolled into a
flattened tube, on which was written the name of someone they
wanted cursed. Most commonly the names were senators and
political leaders. They would invoke Hecate upon the cursing,
and the flames would consume the nail and the cursed victim's
name.
However, the combination of the three goddesses produced hordes
of mystery cults, some at Aegina and Lerna, where they would
initiate women during ceremonies held. Hecate was also invoked
by Dido, in the fourth book of the Aeneid. She built a huge
funeral pyre to commit suicide and at the same time curse the
Trojans on her voyage and Aeneas for leaving her heartbroken. In
doing so, she called upon the goddess Hecate before she flung
herself upon her dagger. Her curse was effective in the fact
that not only did the Trojans wander around for many years, when
they finally got to Rome, and began fighting, Aeneas was killed.
The witch Medea of Colchis,
enchantress and lover of Jason from the Argonauts, called upon
Hecate to get revenge against him for his rejection of her.
Regarded as a witch and a seductress, Medea called herself a
daughter of Hecate, and invoked her mother for success in her
magickal arts. Another goddess closely associated with Hecate
worship is Circe, the lover of Odysseus.
Likewise, Aeneas travelled down to the underworld in Book 6 of
the Aeneid with the Sibyl of Cumae. Hecate took Sibyl and showed
her all the punishments in Tartarus, and taught her everything.
Hecate gave Sibyl the power to control and take care of the
Avernus Wood, the passageway to the entrance of the underworld.
To gain acceptance in for Aeneas, Sibyl sacrificed four black
bullocks to Hecate. Afterwards Sibyl and Aeneas progressed
through the entrance and across the Styx.
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